log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to
fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a
crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to
be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these
are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham."[A]

[Illustration: MODEL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEVICE FOR LIFTING VESSELS
OVER SHOALS.

The inscription above this model, which is shown to all visitors to
the Model Hall of the Patent Office, reads: "6469 Abraham Lincoln,
Springfield, Ill. Improvement in method of lifting vessels over
shoals. Patented May 22, 1849." The apparatus consists of a bellows,
placed in each side of the hull of the craft, just below the
water-line, and worked by an odd but simple system of ropes and
pulleys. When the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or
obstruction, the bellows is filled with air; and, thus buoyed up, the
vessel is expected to float over the shoal. The model is about
eighteen or twenty inches long, and looks as if it had been whittled
with a knife out of a shingle and a cigar box. There is no elaboration
in the apparatus beyond that necessary to show the operation of
buoying the vessel over the obstructions.]

If they were far from being his "first and only rails," they certainly
were the most famous ones he or anybody else ever split. This was the
last work he did for his father, for in the summer of that year (1830)
he exercised the right of majority and started out to shift for
himself. When he left his home to start life for himself, he went
empty-handed. He was already some months over twenty-one years of
age, but he had nothing in the world, not even a suit of respectable